Starring ruth weiss

ruth weiss, photographed by Scot Runyon, 1971

While ruth weiss was living in San Francisco during the 1960’s, the city became a locus point for countercultural artists and performers. It was at the San Francisco Art Institute, where ruth weiss sometimes posed for figure drawings, that is where she met the filmmaker Steven Arnold, and went on to perform in almost all of his avant-garde art films.

The first of these short-films was The Liberation of the Mannique Mechanique (1967), about clothing store mannequins who come to life and experience a sexual awakening. For Arnold’s thesis film at San Francisco Art Institute he directed Messages, Messages (1968), about a journey into the subconscious mind for . 

Later, Arnold directed his first feature film Luminous Procuress (1971), in which two young hippies find themselves in a mysterious mansion owned by the titular Procuress. They are lead on an LSD-induced journey through scenes rife with psychological imagery and other-worldly characters. In this film, ruth weiss portrays a mystic adorned with mirrors and carrying a reflective ball, who dispenses wisdom and self-reflection on the visitors. 

All of these films eschew logical narrative storytelling. Instead, the audience is transported through dream-like sequences, full of ornate costumes and dramatic lighting. The characters are charged with pan-sexual energy- homoeroticism and breaking of gender norms is a constant theme. There is no spoken dialogue at all in the first two films. In Luminous Procuress, the characters' spoken lines are an indecipherable mix of Asian and Indo-European languages. 

ruth weiss and Steven Arnold on the set of Messages and Messages

Luminous Procuress became a favorite of film festivals, and Arnold earned the admiration of surrealist painter Salvador Dali. It was during this period that he asked ruth weiss to write the script for his next film. 

ruth weiss's script, which can be found in her book a fool’s journey, tells the story of a Chinese princess who is sent away from her imperial city before it is consumed by "a holocaust". She must take with her seven sacred objects, and she is assisted in her journey by the mischievous Monkey god and four handmaidens. ruth intended to play a demon that follows the group and besets them at every turn of their journey. 

The project never came to fruition, however. The financial backers withdrew their support. Nonetheless, the collaboration of filmmaker and poet represents a remarkable period of transition and creativity in American culture. Their work linked the beat poetry past to the countercultural future, a synthesis of like-minded outsiders at the right place and at the right time.